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P was fighting the Scrapped Watchman the first time he died.
All things considered, he had held up surprisingly well for most of the fight. The police puppet was monstrously huge, but that meant its attacks were well-telegraphed. P had quickly found a rhythm to the battle: dart in, strike at its joints, and dart back before the earth-shaking fists could connect with him.
Now, P dashed out of the way of another leaping dive and landed a hit on the police puppet’s torso, sending it scrabbling for purchase on the slick stone. A number of severed wires now buzzed and sparked in a cut at the small of its back. If he could get another blow in and cripple the Watchman, that would make it all the easier to deal with.
But before he could land a decisive hit, the Watchman reared back and roared with a fury that shook the ground and rattled every gear in P’s body. Sparks danced in the air as it coated itself with arcs of electric current, and the air was filled with a suffocating static charge. The enraged puppet lashed out with a terrifying boost in power; it wrested the advantage of speed away from P, and the smaller Puppet was forced to go on the defensive in order to avoid getting electrocuted.
It was incredibly unfair, P thought. The Watchman was a machine, too, so electricity should have been just as dangerous to it as it was to him.
No time to gripe now. P snapped back to attention as the massive puppet charged forward, and he barely blocked its flurry of strikes in time. The force of the blows shook every bolt in his body, and he let the momentum carry him backwards and out of the reach of the Watchman's claws. More panels were torn off of the Puppet String, and he reached for the last of his pulse cells – he hadn’t realized how swiftly he had burned through them – only to freeze when the static in the air intensified. His hair stood on end, and Gemini chirped in alarm.
Oh. That’s distressing.
P leapt backwards just as a bolt of light and thunder crashed down, leaving a smoking black stain where he had just been standing.
He was not particularly inclined to try and parry a bolt of lightning.
There was a whistle of metal through the air to his left. Devoid of energy and leaking ergo from numerous damaged pipes, P raised his saber to block and was sent skidding a solid ten feet back from the force of the blow. His battered legion arm couldn’t withstand the strain, and he watched helplessly as the limb completely splintered apart. The Watchman’s eyes glowed read with malicious glee, and it reared back for another electricity-infused swipe.
P slipped on shed ergo-oil and sidestepped a beat too late. Claws tore through the bellows that served as his lungs and curled around his torso, and P felt himself being lifted into the air. The still-novel sensation of pain radiated through his copper-wire nerves, and P flailed weakly in the Watchman’s grip. There was a moment of weightlessness, then another explosion of pain as it slammed him into the ground with enough force to bend the framework in his spine. There was a brilliant flash of light, a shrill cry from Gemini, and an awful, white-hot burning sensation as electricity raced through his ruined body.
The world winked out of existence, and the Puppet was dropped abruptly into a bottomless darkness.
An undefinable amount of time passed in that space.
The silence could have been serene, if not for the restrictive, coiling sensation of nothingness that enveloped the Puppet’s entire being. It felt unpleasantly similar to the fog in his memories: opaque, oppressive, and completely impenetrable. Although… it wasn’t completely blank, was it?
The Puppet recognized this void. He remembered being untethered from existence before, left adrift in darkness while somewhere far in the distance, his body was being prodded and rearranged and rebuilt. He remembered a lone figure standing over him back before he had begun to be, when thought and memory and his sense of self still had yet to fully develop. The Puppet had been just aware enough to hear the man above him calling out a name he couldn’t understand. Calling to him. And then—
A pale blue light broke through the darkness, dispelling the fog and reactivating all of P’s senses. He was drawn into light and warmth, and suddenly he could feel the ground underneath him once again. P opened his eyes and found himself kneeling in front of a stargazer – the one he had repaired just inside the City Hall gates an hour and a half before.
What…?
He frantically looked around him, expecting to see the Watchman looming over the rooftops, preparing to come down and finish him off. But it was completely quiet aside from the wind whistling through the alley and the distant howl of a mechanical dog. P looked down at himself, feeling both relieved and somewhat unnerved at the sight of the Puppet String not in dozens of pieces, but still properly attached to his shoulder as always. His clothing was completely free of ergo-soaked cuts, too, and when he breathed in deeply, his lungs-bellows responded normally. There was nothing at all out of the ordinary, it seemed, despite the fact his whole body had been absolutely obliterated mere moments ago.
“Whoa. Ok, what the heck was that?” Gemini squeaked out, voicing P’s racing thoughts. “Are you OK, pal? That lightning… I thought we were both dead there. We died just now, right? I didn’t hallucinate that? How the heck did we—?!”
P only half-listened as the little cricket puppet rambled on. The Watchman… destroyed me, he thought, I’m sure of it. My arm was broken, and its last attack…
P placed a hand on his chest, right above the panel that protected the P-Organ. He could feel the device humming beneath his fingers, still dutifully regulating the ergo pumping throughout his body. It was running a little too loudly and a little more swiftly than usual, but aside from that, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
I couldn’t have imagined it, though. What just happened?
:Welcome back, clever one.:
One of the blue butterflies broke away from the stargazer and fluttered towards P. He lifted a hand so it could rest on his palm. It didn’t seem to mind that his arm was trembling.
“Sophia!” Gemini said with relief. “You’re here! Good. Did you see what happened back there? P was fighting flawlessly, but out of nowhere that monstrosity started chucking lightning around and it… it was awful. And now we’re back here again? Somehow? Was that a dream, or did we… did we actually…?”
“Did we die?” P asked quietly.
The butterfly’s wings drooped. :Almost. The damage you received from the Watchman was fatal, but before your ergo could dissipate, I was able to reach out to it. I rewound your time and brought you back here.:
Gemini chirped in surprise. “You did what?”
P stared at the butterfly with wide eyes. She rewound time? How?
:This power is… difficult to explain,: Sophia admitted. :I was able to tap in to your ergo and bring you back to the last Stargazer you interacted with. Not physically, but… you could think of it as receiving a memory from the future, or like a vision of an event that might happen, should you perform the same actions. At least, that’s the best way I can explain it right now.:
She could manipulate time. And she had done so to save him. P couldn’t imagine how such an ability was even possible, but right now, he didn’t dare to question this unexpected gift.
“Thank you, Sophia.”
:Of course. But please do not rely on this power too much, for it is… rather draining. Nevertheless, should you face a foe you have no way of beating, this shall give you a way to gather information, gather your strength, and ultimately find a way to avoid a permanent death in your future.:
Gemini whistled. “Wow. That’s still pretty amazing. But, hey, P? Let’s listen to her and not go test it out again anytime soon. That wasn’t very fun, getting fried and all that.”
P nodded his agreement.
:I pray you won’t need such help again. I know that you are more than capable of overcoming the challenges ahead.: Her smile was evident in her tone. :But as always, I will continue to provide help however I can. Good luck, clever one.:
The butterfly fluttered back towards the stargazer, and Sophia’s warm presence left P’s mind. He did a quick check of the condition of his arm and saber one more time, satisfied to see that even his weapons were back perfect working order. But as P made to stand up, both of his legs seized beneath him and nearly sent him crashing face-first into the stargazer. He barely caught himself on the side of a wooden crate, and Gemini’s light flickered in alarm.
“Pal? Seriously, are you OK?” he asked. “You might be all patched up, but that wasn’t a very pleasant experience. I’m still a little shaky, so you don’t need to rush yourself.”
The wood creaked precariously beneath P. “…I’m fine. We need to go.”
And yet his body felt ten times heavier than it had just a minute before. Why was standing so difficult all of a sudden? He couldn’t stop now. Father had given him such an important task and the Watchman needed to be stopped. If time had been rewound, then he was completely fixed now, right? That meant he should be perfectly capable of fighting again. And if he had gone back in time, then he would also have to face off against all of those soldier puppets wandering through the alleyways again. He had to get moving, he had to take care of everything, and quickly. He had a mission, and he had to–
“Pinocchio.”
The Puppet stopped.
“Take a break.” Gemini said seriously. “Otherwise, you’ll just end up dying again. And we all just agreed that was not a good idea. Remember?”
P slid down to his knees.
“See! Even puppets need to stop and recuperate every once in a while. Loosen up your springs and let me take point. I haven’t let anyone get the drop on you yet, have I?”
P frowned down at the lamp-puppet. It was strange how the two of them had been completely repaired thanks to Sophia’s gift, and yet… not moving sounded very appealing right now. Feeling a little uncertain, he settled down near the closest wall and leaned back against the crate, staring up at the moon-illuminated clouds darting in and out of view between the rooftops. Gemini began humming an unfamiliar tune, his singing refreshingly on-key for once. Beside them, the blue light of the stargazer soothed away any lingering uneasiness.
P closed his eyes and breathed slowly, deeply. Simply sitting for a while shouldn’t have mattered to a puppet. He was built to fight, and he wasn’t lacking in power thanks to all of the ergo he had accumulated. But somehow, annoying though it was, Gemini was right. Again.
Rest was nice.